Charles Lamb - Essays of Elia

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Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new-married couple.

Charles Lamb
Gluttony and surfeiting are no proper occasions for thanksgiving.

Charles Lamb
Sunday itself—that unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it …

Charles Lamb
A presentation copy... is a copy of a book whoch does not sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph at the beginning of it; for which, if a stranger, he only demands your friendship; if a brother author, he expects from you a book of yours, which does not sell, in return.

Charles Lamb
Ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater.

Charles Lamb
Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.

Charles Lamb
A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the game.

Charles Lamb
A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.

Charles Lamb
Summer, as my friend Coleridge waggishly writes, has set in with its usual severity.

Charles Lamb
I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.

Charles Lamb
Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.

Charles Lamb
The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture.

Charles Lamb